The U.S. Senate has once again defaulted on its obligation to pay the nation’s bills, preferring to pass to our children and grandchildren another $50 billion worth of debt.

The Senate voted Thursday to put a one-year fix on the Alternative Minimum Tax but chose not to replace the $50 billion in federal revenue that will be lost by this tax cut.

The AMT was passed by the Congress in 1969 as a way of ensuring that high-end earners paid some tax even if their accountants found them a slew of tax loopholes and deductions. The concept behind the tax is sound.

At that time, however, the Congress did not index the income levels at which the AMT becomes effective, so four decades of inflation mean that a great many middle-class taxpayers would get slammed this year without a fix. Congress could not have let that happen. The tax would have been crippling to large families especially.

The House AMT fix is revenue neutral, raising taxes elsewhere to compensate for this cut. The increases hit hedge funds, equity funds and other financial partnerships, according to The New York Times. When Democrats took control of the Congress at the beginning of the year, they promised to return fiscal sanity to Washington.

House leaders say that they will stick to their pledge. But Senate leaders did not. They caved in to the hypocritical obstinacy of Senate Republicans who refused to support the one-year fix if it replaced the $50 billion.

The GOP is the party that was once known for its fiscal restraint. But in the near decade that it ran both the House and Senate, and when it controlled the White House, it ran up enormous debts. It cut taxes and raised spending.

Now the Republicans are standing in the way of the Democratic plan to at least balance the AMT ledger sheet. And Democratic Senate leaders don’t have the courage to stare them down.

The hypocrisy of the Republicans’ position lies in their calling the $50 billion in offsetting revenue a tax increase. It cannot be a tax increase, however, if it is already projected as revenue in the president’s budget. President Bush, in presenting his budget to the Congress, listed the $50 billion that the AMT would raise from middle-class taxpayers as anticipated revenue. He used that $50 billion in the calculations that led him and his GOP mates to say they are making progress on reducing the deficit.

If the president and Senate Republicans are going to make that argument, then Senate Democrats should explain the hypocrisy of their position to the American people.

It is clear what has happened here. Senate Republicans have chosen to protect enormously wealthy financial institutions from paying a fair share of taxes. They’ve chosen, instead, to shift that tax burden to future generations of Americans. And Senate Democrats lack the courage to stand up to that abomination.

— Winstom-Salem Journal/MG News Service